Christmas Number One Betting Odds: Mariah, Girls Aloud, Shaun The Sheep

Aside from wondering which of your relatives you'll end up punching over dinner or who actually knocked Mary up instead of God, the biggest annual Christmas mystery is who'll be Christmas number one.

Well, whoever wins X Factor, obviously. The X Factor winner could fart in a metal dustbin and it'd be the Christmas number one these days - but who'll be the 2007 Christmas number one not including the X Factor winner? That's what we're going to spend the first half of this week looking at, and you'd better appreciate it because listening to some of the awful Christmas number one contenders this year has been worse spending a year trapped in a collapsed mine eating our poo for sustenance, and that's a stone-cold fact.

So who'll be Christmas number one this year? Here are the Christmas number one betting odds for Shaun The Sheep, Mariah Carey and Girls Aloud, with help from Paddy Power…

Shaun The Sheep, Life's A Treat

Ever wondered how funny comedians that you used to like are now? We've found that a good test is to see if they've ever done a novelty reggae Christmas single about a plasticine sheep in a preposterous cockney accent, because that's a fairly good indication that they aren't. So pity Vic Reeves, who for some reason has decided to try and get the Christmas number one with Life's A Treat, a twitching mess of a kiddie song based on Wallace And Gromit also-ran Shaun The Sheep. If Life's A Treat becomes Christmas number one we'll jab ourselves in the eye with a dirty syringe, but you have to respect anyone who can make Bob The Builder sound like Good Vibrations. Current Christmas number one betting odds - 20/1 

Mariah Carey, All I Want For Christmas Is You

Despite what you may have been told at school or church, the real spirit of Christmas is licensing your 13-year-old songs to be rewritten and used to sell sofas in adverts played on local radio every three or four seconds. Sadly, this isn't the rewritten version of All I Want For Christmas Is You with the verse about interest-free credit on the Larini range of sofabeds until midnight on Thursday, it's the one that Mariah Carey sang before she went cuckoo and started dressing like a bloody whore. You know, the one where she manages to make the line "All I want for Christmas is you" last for seven or eight hundred syllables. Will it be Christmas number one? Well it's catchy, but then again so is the bovine bluetongue virus, and we don't don't particularly want that as the Christmas number one either. Current Current Christmas number one betting odds - 12/1 

Girls Aloud, Call The Shots

Poor old Girls Aloud. Not only will their combined Christmas dinner consist of a test tube filled with the water that one brussel sprout was cooked in between them in case Kimberley pigs out and becomes microscopic instead of regulation ultra-microscopic, but they also don't stand a hope of becoming Christmas number one either. You've heard Girls Aloud's effort at Christmas number one Call The Shots - it's the one that sounds a little bit like Klaxons - but it's already been out forever and is about as Christmassy as a brittle fingernail. Sure, it'll be played at lots of office Christmas parties - but would you want a Christmas number one that reminds you of the time you got shitfaced on Lambrini and cheated on your boyfriend with the bad-breathed bloke from HR in the post room? Didn't think so. Current Christmas number one betting odds - 12/1 

Tomorrow - Christmas number one betting odds for Soulja Boy, Alesha Dixon and Sugababes. But if that's too long to wait - or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with - head right over to the Paddy Power Christmas number one betting odds page to see the latest, and best, betting odds.